Tag: yoga teacher

On Yoga Studio Ownership

This is not a new year’s resolution

by ErinLeave a Comment on This is not a new year’s resolution

Posting on Frozen Spaghetti on the 1st of the year comes with no proclamations of anything I am going to “try to do” or attempt in 2026. This post simply comes from my couch while Starships by Nicki Minaj is played by a marching band (via the Rose Bowl) and my husband breaks down the graveyard of Amazon boxes that have been at the foot of our steps since Christmas… you know… that holiday we celebrate the existence of divinity and everlasting peace with cardboard.

I just got home from the studio (slash yoga clubhouse) that I own here in Webster Groves, Missouri, United States. Smack dab in the middle of the continental US for my non US readers. Hi, by the way. Love that you’re here. I started the day off teaching a little bit of a butt kicker to a groovy little playlist and with gingerbread incense threaded throughout the hour. I knew all the students by name, even to where I got excited when I peeked at the roster last night: these are “my people” and I was genuinely excited to see each one of them in the new year.

Because I am all about gear shifting as little as possible, especially on holidays, I kept the studio open for an open house. We had my friend Anna up giving IV hydrations and IM shots. I got my usual IV hydration with glutathione, zinc, Vitamin C and B 12. The tri-immune glutathione, zinc and Vitamin C mix I absolutely swear by and highly recommend to all of you attempting to avoid or get over the flu.

It was about 4 or 5 of us that stayed throughout the day, working on individual creative projects, getting IVs or watching me and my friend Cindy work on “an intuitive painting”. We are turning the front room of the studio / yoga clubhouse into a dwelling space… meditation room… treatment room… quiet room and it needed art. I really truly love what we came up with but it seems a little “floaty”. The blankets I bought for the room do not go with the painting at all. And though I love a good clashing of things – I need this room to be less march to the beat of your own drum and more held by universal love and spirit. Though I could go into how those are the same, there is an aesthetic difference I am trying to reconcile in the space.

But, like all things, I know it is something I don’t actually have to think about to figure out. My mode of operation with this is to wait and listen, pay attention to the energetic quality of things, take it step by step, notice what is used, what is needed and when and what naturally comes about. This is the practice I started that I call “being consistently inconsistent”.

The afternoon ended with the painting getting cleaned up and a small group of us staying in the studio to work through the Fruits of the Spirit and their definitions and create a spectrum of our opposites as we head into the new year. It is a workshop practice I teach that I refer to as “Finding Your Positive Opposites”. I noticed this year that my opposites were getting more fine-tuned. It’s not that I feel disconnected, it’s that I feel misunderstood. I thank the work of Internal Family Systems therapy and a whole lot of yoga, philosophy, rest, stillness and listening to the things that come out of my mouth when I am feeling certain ways.

The dogs are barking asking to come in and I am ready for the next round of new year’s day… I hope that if you are reading this you have a word for 2026 in mind, better yet – maybe even a Fruit of the Spirit you are going to commune with in this first part of the year. Love? Joy? Peace? This year, I am starting with Gentleness although Self Control, Goodness, Kindness were all runners up. Faithfulness, always as a part of the practice and Patience is a must when dealing with…. these dogs barking.

On that note… Happy New Year!! Tell me your word or fruit! I would love love love love love LOVE to know!

Also – what do you think of the painting???

Words in Sentences

On Peace

by Erin1 Comment on On Peace

It’s Sunday morning and I’m outside by a fire in some great midwestern Feb sun, a hoodie and with a jelly jar of 2019 (our engagement year) Washington red wine.

David is walking up with some dry firewood I had stashed in my vintage (2006?) Honda from a workshop I taught back in the fall. I am breathing deep and reflecting – a lot – on Kindness, its relationship to Peace and how often we are required to call these forward because there is more LOVE in our life.

That’s right. I believe as Love increases in your life, there is a shift in how much Peace you experience.

Think about getting a puppy. More Love, less Peace. It makes sense.

Just as I write this, I notice the warm body of my blonde boy dog, Thor. Gorgeous dog, honestly who is now getting pets and ear strokes from David. Also enjoying the casual sunshine on a winter morning, we all know spring is a thing and are happy to see the world turning its way.

I believe as God gives you more Love through people and through dogs, the shift in how much Peace the external world gives you is not to make you question the Love or its meaning but to draw you inward. For what more is the spirit of Peace than the breath? The balance of alternate nostril breathing, the purification of breath of fire, the immediate effects of more oxygen in the brain from simple 3 part or 6 count inhales. I mean. Peace, I think, has always been meant to come from within.

I like to say I don’t know what I am doing with my life and I tend towards the struggle of “what’s the point and purpose” but I know how it feels to stumble upon freeing spiritual perspective and if there is one thing I can offer the world, it would be – at minimum – a sample of the truth in my life that is making navigation easier. Note: It’s not making hard things easier, it’s making the navigation of life easier. Hard things will always be hard.

My reflections this morning started as noticing how self love is God’s love and morphed into how inner peace is God’s Peace. I read Psalm 13 and replaced “Lord” with Peace and broke down the words to feel applicable: “How long, Peace – will you forget me forever? How long will you hide what you look like these days (face) from me?”

What does Peace look like these days?

There is an American Spiritual Song that references Peace “like a river” – Peace as changeable, fluid, evolving. But yet, always in the same direction – always headed for it’s bigger place. Able to carry, able to be explored. Peace can look like anything.

For me, a big part of my spiritual life is noticing how my faith in something bigger than me that gives me purpose requires me to grow and change. I think of the whole process like a plant. A little tender plant brought home from the nursery and how – no matter how long I have been gardening – I always brace myself for that first heavy rain or forceful wind. Astonished the next morning how the plant seems a little stronger because of what it weathered.

Its first full day in blazing sun where it looks parched and in desperate need of water, to then drink and seem to have grown an inch.

What are you taking in? Through your body, your senses, your heart? And how is the heat of it? The force of it? Changing you?

That growth, seems to be, an internal process based on what the plant takes in from the outside.

So what does Peace look like for you today?

And how can you use that breath – that fire – that sunshine – that ease to allow the internal processes to take in the elements of life and transform your heart?

Just keep figuring yourself out, honestly. Is all you can do.
Words in Sentences

Theme for January: What Stays the Same in a Season of Change

by ErinLeave a Comment on Theme for January: What Stays the Same in a Season of Change

On Sunday, January 5th, 2020, I began teaching a 7a yin class at the studio in Maplewood where I had a regular restorative offering.

I got there early, around 6, with a leather bound journal and cleared the room. I set the lighting dim, put the battery operated candles all around and covered the supply shelf with a blanket, added height and dimension. Once the room was set, I put books of ancient text, my mug of hot water and – of course – the leather bound journal & pencil – out on the floor and I sat in the space I created and prayed.

“Backwards, moving, warming. The words are underneath my brain all the while things kept moving…”

Those are the first words I scribbled in the journal, waiting for the flow to begin… to be told what to teach. I approached that Sunday morning yin class as a door for me and others – a sacred opening for us to maybe even come fully alive in a pose or in a breath – and feel that awesome feeling we get sometimes when we are truly fully present: that suspension and peace.

Each Sunday, I held myself to the same practice: preparing the space, sitting and waiting, sketching the thoughts and the poses. Until March 22nd, 2020 – the last class in person before we went into lock down. I remember the 9a teacher arriving early for her last class and our students mixing in the lobby… a few tears… what is going on? Are things really like closing?

2020 was the first year I started with a practice and kept it up until disrupted by the world. I remember considering continuing with a weekly morning email for folks to practice at home. Doing the same thing in my own home and sharing. But it did not feel right. So I did not.

Now we are on the 2nd of January – the first Sunday in January – and having a Sunday morning practice of sitting with an open heart and listening feels right. This year, it is not a yin class I prepare for, but the continual growth of Appletreemagic.com and the four books I plan on putting into the world this year.

I am prepared to let go of any of those four books should the world force my hand while also I am confident enough in what they are and how I know them to say they are what I am doing. This is the balance of effort and ease. Trusting yourself to hold on to something with diligence while being open to the way they will be shaped, the way your hand may be forced to let go, the way creativity may ebb….

And so here lies the January theme:

What do you know well enough to allow to be constant?

What do you know well enough to allow to change?

We get our kids back over the course of this afternoon and the next couple of days from their other parents’ house where they have been for a week. David and I have had a week of hiking, eating well and rest. We feel good. I can tell we feel good. But, when you look around the house we live in – you would see our current crux: our “endless loop” of shifting a room’s purpose and furniture and stuff to work for our family.

Even with all the ideas floating around as to how to set up the family room, dining area and sitting area, I still hung four pictures in the corner of one of the rooms. Because it is where my desk is… This corner is my constant in my house of change. It’s an anchor that will baseline the evolution of how the rest of the house falls into place as well as how the year goes.

In closing, at 40 years old, I have gone through enough iterations of myself with full head on awareness of what I wanted to spin out of or step into that I know one of the tricks is to allow some thing to be constant. Overhaul as much as you want, but keep the thing that works the same. At least try to until the world forces your hand. Because even in that case, the sacred place and priority you gave it will make it fun to see how it comes fully circle.

I believe what you allow to be constant and what you allow to change is a reflection of how you keep your heart and – thus – what your life presents to you as the things you must work through. Think about it.